As is the case for many Latin American cities, fútbol is the sporting lifeblood of La Paz. And here, the fans are as devoted as anywhere. Just go to any clásico at Estadio Hernando Siles, where the two rival local clubs battle it out, and you will understand what passion really is. The teams’ rabid supporters camp on opposite curves of the stadium – Bolívar to the north, The Strongest to the south – each side trying to outdo the other with songs of support to their heroes and jeers of insults to their rivals across the bowl. This is one of the biggest, rowdiest events in La Paz, and is not to be missed.
At these games, the stadium becomes a sea of two colours. The rough and rowdy Strongest fans, identifying themselves as ‘Tigres’, cast a golden hue across their half, their bright banners waving in the wind. Across the divide, Bolívar supporters adorn themselves in blue, shouting calls to their dear ‘Celeste’. Both sides exude this passion inside and outside the stadium, and the colours of a person’s clothing on the street is often an easy signifier of their loyalties. It is clear that these two colours hold very special meaning to the people of La Paz.
This month, we wanted to explore those colours, gold and blue, a little more thoroughly. With such cultural significance for our city’s sports-minded denizens, we sought out other ways in which gold and blue make La Paz, and greater Bolivia, what it is.
This issue of Bolivian Express is divided in half between the gold and the blue, much like the stadium during a crosstown matchup. We meet a Bolivian hopeful striving for Olympic gold, and learn some of the myths of golden corn that have been told for generations across the Andes. We imbibe on the sweet golden nectar of chicha near Cochabamba, taste the variety of flavours of local brews, and learn of one man’s vision to turn fields of grain into Bolivian alcohol independence. Perhaps most importantly, we ask the hard question on everyone’s lips: why is all the chicken at Bolivian carnicerías unnaturally golden-hued?
Turning to the other side of the stadium, we explore the realities of feeling blue, from a lighthearted look at the common experience of traveller’s blues to the very real issues of mental health and psychological treatment. We meet an incredible woman leading the way for members of Bolivia’s transgender community, often identified with the colour blue. And we learn about an important national archive often associated with blue that is affecting Bolivian politics from the top down and the bottom up.
Walking the streets of La Paz in the small hours, thinking about the colours gold and blue, the obvious becomes clear. Morning light here can offer a golden sun so close you can touch it, and a blue sky so crisp you can feel its soothing chill on your face. In this city, these colours seem brighter, and offering sensations to those standing under them. This may just be an effect of the altitude. But it may be something else. Like sitting in the stands at a clásico, gold and blue are all around you when in Bolivia, and if you let these colours sink in, the feeling can be electric.
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Photos: Sophie Hogan
Text: Aida Muratoglu
when they told us the sun would set earlier in May than it did in December
I felt a tinge of betrayal
winter in La Paz nothing like the
snow day-filled, salty-shoed, air-too-cold-it-burns-your-lungs
season I grew up on
instead, shade too cold, sun too hot when this removed from the
mechanised movements of sea level
fruit eerily ripe
sold in streets of worn out brick and midday salteña stops
under sweet tangle of telephone wires
5 am El Alto cloudy purple api stewing in pots
waiting to singe morning-bleary tongues
dogs sniff at pedestrian feet for bite of pastel
melted cheese stretching from pastry to mouth
fluttery clouds obscure regal Illimani
later, patchwork flicker of lights from warm comfort of yellow teleférico
the resilient speed of this city filtering through salchipapa-filled stomachs
Photo: Nick Somers
More Than Just Feeling Blue
Mobile phones – used for talking, texting, and… depression management?
That’s exactly the idea behind a 2015 pilot study lead by John D. Piette, PhD, Professor of Health Behavior and Health Education, and of Internal Medicine Director, Center for Managing Chronic Disease, an epidemiologist at the School of Public Health at Michigan University. Dr. Piette and his team used automated calls to track the progress of participants and supply them with education around mental illness, including unhelpful thoughts and goals.
Bolivian psychologist Amparo Clara Aruquipa Yujra worked on the pilot study, and says it received good results and positive feedback from participants. Today, she is part of the team working on a new pilot programme to be held in La Paz. This programme will utilise more information than the first to better help participants trying to recover from depression.
The team working on the new project is collaborating with local psychologists and professionals, as well as the team from Michigan University, to create an accurate and effective programme. Resources for participants include information on self-care, community involvement, and goal setting. One aspect of the programme is aimed at helping people to deal with the issues in their lives that may make them more susceptible to mental illness, such as suffering from violence or poverty.
Another goal of the programme is to advocate for community involvement to help address mental illness. The programme will involve families and broader communities to address these challenges as a community effort.
Aruquipa Yujra says the new programme was difficult to arrange, but anticipates that it will be started in the next month. ‘We want to share this experience,’ she says, ‘and then show how this can help people with the use of community healthcare workers.’
The programme includes texts and automated calls to survey its participants and monitor their progress and the severity of their mental illnesses, using the methodology of the Michigan University study. Participants also have manuals that they can consult, with tailored text messages giving them guidance. The use of cellphones is intended to make mental health treatment more accessible to the population, the researchers say.
Mental illness, especially depression, is in many ways hidden in Bolivia, with World Health Organisation (WHO) statistics showing that neuropsychiatric disorders contribute to an estimated 16 percent of the burden of disease in Bolivia. Across the country, there are only 956 beds available in mental hospitals – that’s 9.56 per 100,000 people – yet the WHO estimates that mental illness affects one in four people throughout their lives.
‘Unfortunately, what we have found in our studies is [people] don’t recognise depression as a problem,’ Aruquipa Yujra says. ‘They just say that it’s a…bad mood, and that’s it.’
This misunderstanding may be why nearly two-thirds of people with a mental illness never seek any professional help. Additionally, other medical problems often take precedence over more pressing mental-health concerns. ‘[People] often have these other problems like lack of money or other [physiological] illnesses,’ Aruquipa Yujra explains. ‘Having to beat diabetes is more crucial than their own mental health.’
Dr. Josue Bellot, the medical director at the San Juan de Dios Centre of Rehabilitation and Mental Health in La Paz, believes there’s a strong stigma in Bolivia against people with mental illness that discourages them from seeking the help they need. ‘In this country there is this stigma that psychiatry relates only to “crazy” people,’ he says. ‘The moment that a doctor refers a patient to a psychiatrist, the patient is labelled “loco”.’
Dr. Bellot said an improvement in education, both for medical professionals and for the general public, is needed to help reduce stigma, but unfortunately, there are not enough resources available. He lamented that the few psychiatrists in Bolivia are focused on patient care, so promotion, education and prevention miss out.
But stigma is not the only barrier that makes seeking mental healthcare difficult for Bolivians. According to Dr. Bellot, access to healthcare means that seeing a professional is challenging, as there are very few centres in the country, and they are often far away. He believes that for many people, treatment is literally out of reach, as the time and cost of travel makes it inaccessible.
For this reason, Dr. Bellot emphasised the disadvantage many Bolivians face by not being able to afford treatment. He notes that treatment can take several months or longer and can be expensive, once accounting for additional factors such as occupational therapy and psychology. ‘The most important factor [in being unable to receive treatment for mental illness] is the high cost of psychological medicine, and this affects everyone,’ he said. ‘Not everyone has $10 to spend on medicine regularly.’
The solution, according to Dr. Bellot, lies with the state.
The Royal College of Psychiatrists in London said that in 2000 Bolivia was ‘one of the first South American countries to have a written mental health plan’, but critics, including the WHO, point to a lack of funding leading to little progress occurring in the last couple of decades.
People don’t recognise depression as a problem. They say it’s a bad mood, and that’s it.’
– Psychologist Amparo Clara Aruquipa Yujra
‘The state doesn’t have a law for mental health,’ says Dr. Bellot. ‘A programme on mental health has been worked on since last year, but it is not concrete yet, and they haven’t coordinated with other mental health professionals.’
Dr. Bellot believes this problem is two-fold, as the government is addressing other issues above healthcare, and, within healthcare, mental health remains at the bottom of the list of priorities. But he hopes society will pressure the government to change and come up with the necessary policies.
While the state is being criticised for its lack of effort, others are pushing forward to try and find solutions. Aruquipa Yujra said it would be a dream for programmes like hers to be the future of treatment for mental illnesses. ‘Anyone can have access to a cell phone, and they don’t need extra knowledge,’ she points out.
Currently, the new programme is still in the research phase, and thus only benefits a small proportion of the mentally ill population in Bolivia.
‘We don’t have the human resources to give this service to the whole population who need [it],’ Aruquipa Yujra said. But the programme continues to be developed. ‘It’s going little by little, but I think that, at the end, it’s going to work.’
Illustration: Hugo L. Cuéllar
A gringo’s attempt at watching a play in Spanish
I’m as gringo as they come. The only Spanish I knew before coming to Bolivia was ‘hola’. I even bought a jumper with alpacas on it the other day. And yet, I’ve decided to see a play in La Paz entirely in Spanish. Why do I think I will understand it? Probably my white Western arrogance that everything is meant for me…
So here is my summary and review of the local play El Proceso por la Sombra de un Burro. Google translate says it means ‘The Process of the Shadow of a Donkey’ – but I have less than a shadow of a thought on what in the world that could possibly mean. Lucky for me, the play told a lot without words.
The stage set was particularly telling. There were always three gold arches in the background, that could mean anything, but everyone knows that three is the Illuminati’s number. It was obvious to me that they were sending a message to the audience: the Illuminati is everywhere. The power of the Illuminati is incredible and I, for one, pledge my undying allegiance to them because they are definitely reading this article (they know everything).
I could tell one of the main characters in the play was a peasant because he was wearing a rope belt. The other was a guy in a black suit who liked fedoras more than my ex-boyfriend. They appeared to be fighting over a human slave in a donkey onesie, which was terrifying because there were kids watching!
The two men went to court over who would get the donkey-slave. When the peasant went home to tell his wife about his plight, she had an epiphany that slave ownership is wrong. I think she complained to her friend about it, who apparently didn’t understand the issue (I guess in this alternative universe, having slaves in donkey onesies is common behaviour?). The woman decides to leave her husband, which, in my opinion, was the right call.
She then seemed to visit a witch, and gave her some gold. I’m not quite sure what the witch gave her in return, but hopefully it was something either to help her get over her broken marriage or to start a new life (maybe she wants to be an apprentice witch, that would be cool).
They were sending a message to the audience: the Illuminati is everywhere.
The witch then visits someone very rich – I know this because he was wearing the fanciest gown I’ve ever seen outside of RuPaul’s Drag Race. She performed a hypnotising dance for him, probably to put him under her spell. Now with a blue-blooded man in her power, she could control the entire town!
This is where things get kind of dark. A person in a long, black cloak covering their face bribed an alcoholic pirate (who looked like Captain Jack Sparrow) to set fire to the village. It was probably Death, history’s great equaliser, who could no longer stand the horror of slaves being forced to wear donkey suits.
So fire cleansed the village and the donkey was free! With her new-found freedom, the donkey stood in the rubble of the destroyed town and chastised everyone for their behaviour. After her dramatic oration, she left, hopefully to start a revolution against slave-keeping monsters.
Even without understanding the dialogue, I’d rate this play 4.5/5. It has the excellent message of abolishing slavery and encourages everyone to revolt against the class system. The only thing that could be improved is the advertising, because there were kids as young as four in the audience and some of the themes were way too advanced for them. Either that, or I totally misunderstood the show, in which case, they should also include subtitles.
Disclaimer: This piece is a work of satire, and not intended to be taken seriously in any way. The cast and crew of El Proceso por la Sombra de un Burro put on an impressive, enjoyable show.
